Burn-In

by P. W. Singer

  “Man, you can still smell it in the air,” said McLean Police Department Detective Alice Tsay.

  “Yeah, I hate it. Reminds me of Ramadi,” said her partner, Detective Bill Apfel. “The thing no one wants to say is that death . . . stinks.”

  “Deep. My partner, the poet,” Tsay said.

  “No doorbell cam that I can see,” Apfel said.24

  “Let’s get this over with.” Tsay tapped her vizglasses to make sure they were on. It was required in all interactions now with civilians. As if she were going to beat down some guy on his front stoop.

  It wasn’t that kind of neighborhood anyway. Excepting the burned-down house that reeked of dead bodies, everything else was pretty nice. A cul-de-sac with mostly two-story houses and real grass lawns that reflected their owners’ ability to pay the landscaping-water surcharge.

  She waited for someone to answer at the house next door, but nothing happened.

  After a few seconds, Apfel whispered, “This asshole dead too?”

  “Detective Apfel is noting his surprise that the resident has not greeted us yet,” Tsay said loudly. Her partner always forgot how sensitive the recorder was.

  Even if no one was home, the house would normally ask them to leave a message. That’s when she noticed the door was an older model. It had regular hinges, rather than automated ones, and the door lock was analog. There was even an old glass peephole instead of a camera and screen.

  “Guess we’re going to have to knock,” she said, as much for the recorder as for Apfel.

  It’d been a while, so she consciously thought through just how hard to hit the door with her knuckles. Not so hard as to come across like a hyped-up SWAT team, but hard enough to send the message that the person on the other side meant business.

  After ten seconds, they heard a male voice behind the door. “I’m coming.” He sounded tired, as if merely saying the words took effort.

  “I’m Detective Alice Tsay, McLean Police Department,” she said through the door. “Can we speak to you?”

  “Yeah, just give me a second.”

  The door’s metal locks turned slowly and it opened halfway. Tsay saw a man in pajama bottoms and a gray Princeton sweatshirt.

  Jackson Todd of McLean, Virginia, looked a little older, thinner, but it was him. His face matched the homeowner’s driver’s license in the database.

  “Sorry to take so long,” Todd said. “I’m a bit under the weather. Something I ate, I think.”

  “Yeah, it’s going around,” Tsay said. She paused. Let him fill the silence. Sometimes it would take you in unexpected directions.

  “Is there something I can help you with?” he asked after exactly three seconds. Long enough to be awkward, but nothing revelatory.

  “The fire that destroyed your neighbor’s home. We’re checking in with all the neighbors, see if they know anything that could aid the investigation.”

  Tsay watched Todd recoil like an unseen hand had yanked him out of sight. She heard a cough and then a gag. Apfel put a hand on the wooden front door, tempted in the moment to give it a slight nudge and use the chance to render assistance as an excuse to gain entry. Tsay shook her head at him, and he pulled his hand back, remembering that those unmonitored days were done.

  Todd reappeared, his hand on the door. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just the smell, it makes it all worse.”

  “Yeah,” said Apfel. “The last time I smelled something like this—”

  Tsay cut him off before he could freak out the civilian more. “Did you notice anything that could have caused the fire at the Chaits? Anything they say to you that might help the fire department in its investigation?”

  “No. Nothing like that. Should I be worried? The neighborhood association said it was just a tragic accident.”

  “Every death is a tragedy,” Tsay said. “So far, it looks like something went awry with their home operating system. But there’s been a rash of tech fails recently, so we’re investigating to ensure no foul play.”

  Todd nodded, his fingers gripping the door tighter. “Can we do this inside?” He swallowed, as if grappling with the bite of something bitter welling up into his mouth. “I can give you the passwords to check out my systems and I can, um, take care of business.”

  Tsay looked over at Apfel, whose blank face said it all. If Todd had something to hide, he wouldn’t have invited them in and offered up his passwords, while playing IT department for a puking civilian was certainly not how they wanted to spend the rest of the day.

  “No, that’s OK, sir,” Tsay said. “Tech fixes aren’t the police’s job. Hope you feel better soon.”

  After Todd closed the door with another cough, Apfel turned to her and said, “Disaster avoided.”

  Clarendon Neighborhood

  Arlington, Virginia

  The chair was killing her back and the holster was digging into her side. Whoever had designed the furry orange chair in the shape of a cat had not planned for the sciatic nerve of an adult or the bulk of a Sig pistol. But Haley, sitting cross-legged across from her in a black and white chair that was pudgy like a panda, loved the soft furniture that decorated the coffee shop’s kids area. Keegan loved coffee, had ever since she’d stolen sips from her mother’s mug of fresh-ground heavily sweetened black brew she drank before leaving to work at the mill in Shelton. She’d leave after a kiss on Keegan’s cheek left her in a cloud of coffee, and she’d come home offering a hug tinged with the sharp bite of pulping chemicals. Keegan wondered if the association of smell and person was similar for Haley. Since before she could walk, the two of them would head out on “Starbucks ops.” First it was pushing a jogging stroller, then Haley driving her little e-car. It was bonding time for them while Jared went to his personal CrossFit coach. Back then, they’d seen that sort of thing as a necessity; like so much else, it had evolved into another source for arguments when they started to wonder whether they could afford it. This afternoon, it was about the two of them getting away, but this time it was to have a more uncomfortable conversation than the play area of pandas and cats had been designed for. Given the number of single parents on the weekends who took their kids there, maybe it had been.

  TAMS sat next to Keegan like a patient dog. Its stillness did not betray its soaking up of the freely available training data in the room, everything from syllables of whispered conversation to the ideal temperature of a grande Americano. The machine was essentially just one massive sensor, collecting in four dimensions as it tracked the physical world but also the terabytes of data packets flowing around the Starbucks. She thought back to Modi’s distinction between sentience and sapience.

  “How’s your cocoa?” Keegan asked. The weather had cooled down again, but Haley would have ordered it even on a triple-digit day.

  Haley smiled, sipping from the spill-proof thermal bag that looked like a cross between a Christmas stocking and a foil-wrapped hot dog.

  “The panda chair OK?”

  “Can we take it home?”

  Keegan laughed. “You’d have to walk it and feed it because I’m not taking care of another bear. Baz gets in the way enough.” Her chair began to purr as she leaned forward to wipe a smudge of chocolate from the corner of Haley’s mouth. A haptic reminder her coffee cup was empty, trying to get her to leave or buy another. There was always some way they were trying to increase customer throughput. It had come, though, just when she was working her way up to the part of the talk she’d dreaded. “Haley, you want another one?”

  “Yummy,” she said.

  “What do you say?”

  “Please!”

  They got up and walked over to the ordering kiosk, an ebony and dark mahogany obelisk projecting out from the wall.25

  “Hey, Haley! You’ve gotten bigger since your last cup,” said Ariel, the coffee shop’s human host, actually making eye contact through her vizglasses. She stood by the kiosk to assist, but really was just there to make conversation with people.

  Keegan guessed
Ariel was a college student but had never asked. The too-easy familiarity always threw her. She wondered whether Ariel ­actually recognized Haley from all the times her name had popped up in her vizglasses, or if she needed the reminder with each visit.

  “Going to get her another,” Keegan replied. “You know how she loves it here.” Did she?

  “Enjoy,” Ariel said. After making eye contact, which her vizglasses tracked for how often she looked customers in the eye and for how long, she then looked into the distance. She was probably side-hustling a gig tagging images for an AI learning firm or whoever else was willing to buy her time for five minutes at a go.26

  Keegan paused for a half second in front of the kiosk to still her movements for the facial recognition.27 After it approved her account, she reset the interface to enter their order manually, rather than having it self-order based on their past purchases, mood, and sleep data.28

  “Hot. What does that start with?” she asked Haley.

  “H!” said Haley.

  It was something that the designers often forgot. Efficiency was not always the goal of the user. “Yep,” said Keegan. “H as in hhh . . . hot.”

  They spelled her order out letter by letter, with Haley managing almost all of “chocolate,” slipping up on the silent “e” at the end.

  Thinking of the haptic nudge from her chair and what else was to come, Keegan realized she’d need to refortify too. “Now, help me with my order,” she said, carefully moving Haley’s finger across the keyboard, spelling out “f-l-a-t” and then “w-h-i-t-e”. Stained with green and red pen ink, Haley’s fingers were so tiny, so delicate. In that moment, Keegan grew angry at herself. Was this going to be one of those conversations that would harden her little girl?

  “But you spelled it wrong,” said Haley. “There’s no ‘h’ in white. H is for happy.”

  “It’s a silent letter. You don’t need it when you say it, but when you write it, you do.”

  “Why?” Haley asked.

  “Because it helps people say it better,” said Keegan.

  “That’s silly.”

  She walked Haley back to her seat until the order was ready at the counter. Leaning back, she steeled herself for what she needed to tell her daughter, watching Haley play in the panda chair. Trying to explain grammar and spelling was hard enough; articulating what was going on with her and Jared was going to be far harder.

  Ariel the greeter brought their drinks over to them in a courtesy that was not extended to all the customers. Keegan wasn’t certain as to whether it was truly a personal connection or simply the suggestion of another corporate affinity algorithm. She thanked the girl and resolved to take a moment later to give her a five-star rating.

  Passing Haley her drink, she marveled at the precise imperfection of how her name was written on the side of the cup. The edges of each letter even had the fairly detectable imperfections of pen ink, as if the writer were already moving on to the next cup, idea, or conversation while engrossed in behind-the-bar activity. But there was nobody actually there.

  “Here you go,” said Keegan. “It’s hot, careful.”

  “TAMS, how hot is it?” said Haley, sitting back in her chair and resting her leg on the robot.

  “The temperature is 129 degrees,” said TAMS.

  “I knew he would have an answer,” she said. “He looks like he’s sleeping, but I can feel him breathing.”

  “Wait, what?” Keegan asked.

  Haley touched her leg where it brushed against one of TAMS’s cooling ports, behind its left shoulder. “Here.”

  “Haley, it’s not . . .” Then she thought better of it. No need to destroy all her childlike beliefs in one afternoon, like robots are alive or parents know best. “I’m glad you like TAMS.”

  TAMS shifted slightly, moving its head left and right, then back to center.

  “So, honey, can I talk to you about something?”

  Haley’s face lost its joy. Kids were good at picking up on those shifts. It was something about the parent trying to sound happy that gave it away.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “When Daddy and I argue, I just want to make sure that you know it’s not about you. We are both working a lot, really hard, right now. Sometimes our feelings get in the way.”

  “I know you love me,” she said. “And Daddy too.”

  “Yes, Daddy loves you so much.”

  “I know that,” Haley sighed, exasperated. “I mean I know you love Daddy.”

  “I do.”

  There was no other answer she could give. She looked over at TAMS and wondered what the machine was seeing—and whether it believed her or not. She hoped Haley at least did.

  Clarendon Neighborhood

  Arlington, Virginia

  There were no tears from Haley. Trying to explain her parents’ new relationship was only going to get harder as she got older, though.

  Keegan sipped her coffee and watched her daughter, lost in play, tapping TAMS’s head with a crayon, drumming to a song only she could hear.

  TAMS’s head pivoted swiftly to address Keegan. The jerking surprised Haley and she spilled her drink.

  “NOOO!” the girl squealed.

  “It’s OK, butterfly, we can get another.” As Keegan daubed at Haley’s shirt with a napkin, TAMS began to speak, unprompted.

  “Agent Keegan, there is a system-wide alert from the Army Corps of Engineers for the Potomac River Basin area.”

  She stopped and turned back to TAMS. “A little late to be telling everybody the Potomac’s turned blood red.”

  “There is a widespread disruption of the river’s flow-management systems, creating a cascading surge with imminent, catastrophic effect on the Washington Metropolitan area.”

  Keegan grabbed Haley by the hand, keeping her close as she made her way to the door, not even looking for TAMS to follow. As she passed Ariel, who looked quizzically at Keegan running out with her daughter in tow, Keegan said, “If you know anyone who lives down by the river, National Landing, Alexandria, Georgetown, wherever, tell them to get to the highest ground they can find.”

  “Huh?” said Ariel.

  And with that, Keegan was outside on the street, summoning her SUV. The vehicle pulled up with its lights flashing. As Keegan put Haley in the back seat, TAMS walked around the vehicle. That surprised Keegan; she had not commanded the bot to do so. Rather than getting in the front seat, the robot climbed in to sit on the other side of Haley. It was following some kind of protective protocol. Was that a set program, or something it had learned from tracking her? Once the three were inside, and TAMS helped Haley fasten her seat belt, the car wedged its way into traffic for the short trip back to their apartment.

  Keegan tried to message Jared, but the signal kept dropping and her Fed override wasn’t getting through either. Shielding the Watchlet’s screen from Haley, she brought up DC Metro Police footage from the Key Bridge. She squinted, unsure of what she was seeing. A wall of reddish-brown, roiling water rushed downstream, surging around the pillars of the storied bridge that connected the District of Columbia and Virginia. She froze the image and expanded it: tree branches spiked skyward out of the frothing water, a blue pickup truck slowly spun like a drifting leaf.

  “Haley, when we get home it’s really important you listen to your dad,” Keegan said.

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s your father,” Keegan said. “Just do whatever he says when TAMS and I go back to work.”

  “Has something bad happened?”

  “You’re safe. You’re going to be fine. Be a good listener.”

  As she spoke, Keegan called up a cartoon stream on her Watchlet and sent it to the SUV’s main screen. “We’ll be home soon, butterfly.”

  “Can’t you and TAMS stay with me? I don’t want you to go.”

  Keegan looked at the robot and wondered what it would make of a comment like that. It could not feel the words as a human would. TAMS could only process Haley’s request as a demand, as just m
ore data. But as a mother, it utterly destroyed her.

  The Tidal Basin

  Washington, DC

  “What’s the matter, honey? Is everything OK?”

  It was distinctly not. No matter how hard Tim Phan mashed the pedals, the stupid swan boat seemed to be stuck in place, unable to get away from the other rental boats pushed together by the wind. The one thing he couldn’t control, the weather, was going to ruin what was supposed to be the biggest moment of his life.

  All the data had pointed him and Dana Rodriguez to this instant. The cross-mapped psychological profiles, the overlapping friend networks, even the 87 percent successful relationship projections they’d each received before their very first meetup over a cup of zucchini tea, an experience suggested by their cloud activity. It all made sense; this was the person he was supposed to spend the rest of his life with . . . if the damned wind would just cooperate.

  The plan was to propose to her in the middle of the Tidal Basin, with all the memorials looking on. Dana taught US History to tenth graders at Falls Church High School, so it just fit her. A romantic setting in the center of all that made this country great, from Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King Jr. to the collected faces of the Women Leaders Monument—Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Sandra Day O’Connor, and all the others—staring down. She’d be able to share the viz of it all not just with her family, but with all her students. She’d love that.

  Even the temperature was right. The last thing he wanted to do was propose with sweat running off his forehead, though he might have been able to blame the heat for his nerves. Fortunately, the spring weather roller coaster had gone from the hundreds back down to the seventies, an almost perfect day to be out on the water.1 Except he’d forgotten to check the wind. And now it was going to ruin it all. He didn’t want to propose to Dana with some family of tourists in Alabama football shirts sitting just a boat’s length away. He tried to pedal harder to get some distance, cursing everything from the wind to himself for wearing flip-flops.